Tomás Alonso shows us how to do beautiful furniture properly

RCA graduate Tomás Alonso commands a lot of respect here at It’s Nice That. We can’t help but admire the way he makes functional furniture in new and exciting (but often deliciously simple) ways. Sure, it helps that his products look really good, but it’s Tomás’ commitment to function over form that we appreciate the most – if it doesn’t do the job properly, he won’t bother making it. You can see this commitment to function throughout all of his work, but his ongoing project A Frame Tables highlights it the best. It’s a series of foldable trestles that can be stored flat when they’re not in use, meaning you can fit a beautiful piece of furniture in even the tiniest of spaces. No big deal? You try finding space to eat dinner in a typical London flat.

Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec’s studio is midway along a notably undramatic street in northeastern Paris, a few minutes walk from the Place de la République. Inside, the three-level space hums with activity; it is part office, laboratory, library, wood shop, and archive, with examples of the greatest hits from two decades of collaboration with renowned brands, mixed in with the tools of the trade: an antique sewing machine, power tools, a 3D printer.

Carly Jo and Matthew Morgan have collaborated in the past on jewellery, artworks and textiles but it’s their new line of rose marble, pastel velvet and walnut furniture – reminiscent of both neolithic rituals and 1980s hairdressers – that caught our attention.

Last time we met the Galvin Brothers, we were driving around the Yorkshire countryside where they apparently knew everybody, and the pair was just gearing up to create a range of designs for “whiskey drinkers.” The project was a part of The Jameson Works, a community for makers which sees the whiskey brand work with creatives on different projects, each one focusing on the process of how they make what they make. In this case, it was a range of furniture for a bar that would best suit drinking whiskey.

If you’re tasked with redesigning the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse at Los Angeles International airport – the very last room visitors to the US’ beautiful west coast are going to see before jetting back off to their own grey lives – you’d best make sure you do a bloody good job of it. Virgin Atlantic were thoroughly aware of the potential pitfalls of such a project, and so have set about creating a space which encapsulates the warm, individual spirit that the company has gone to such lengths to establish. And it seems to us that they’ve succeeded.

I get lost on my way to meet with Studio Swine. I can’t find their studio – or I think it’s their studio – which is where we have arranged to meet. It’s in a place called Yard House which doesn’t appear to have a number and is one of those few places that doesn’t come up on my Google maps. It’s supposedly situated somewhere along the A road of Stratford High Street in east London. Trucks and cars are whizzing past me to my left, and to my right are wire-fenced scrap yards and anonymous London-brick buildings, as well as a Porsche shop and the looming golden arches of a McDonalds.

Eventually, after exploring random cul-de-sacs littered with rubbish, I find it tucked behind one of the industrial buildings; a fragile-looking structure that looks like a cartoon house made from pastel coloured, overlapping scales of wood. Azusa Murakami and Alex Groves – the pair making up the award winning design studio who have been nominated for Designs of the Year – stand outside, dressed in geometric layers of colour and lumberjack patterns. They look a bit like a 21st Century re-imagining of designer dream team Ray and Charles Eames. Like Eames, Azusa and Alex are a couple; they’re pioneers of new technologies and materials; they’re interdisciplinary and create films and exhibitions that correspond with their designs; and they’re interested in everything from ecology and philosophy to poetry and machines.

Graphic designer-turned furniture designer Matthew Galvin is, as we discovered last month, a really nice bloke, and one with a thing or two to say about branding. Together with his brother, he is Galvin Brothers, the furniture company with an “honest to goodness ethos” that knows how key graphic touch points are to any successful business. The pair was recently snagged by The Jameson Works to transform a London bar into one best suited for sipping on whiskey, working to the brief “Form and Function.”